The Conference of the European Academy of Childhood Disability

On the 5th-7th of June 2008, in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, the 20th Annual Meeting of the European Academy of Childhood Disability took place.

Croatia became the first non West-European country to host the conference with such a step being motivated by the desire to promote the European Academy of Childhood Disability in Eastern Europe alongside with contributing to bridging the differences in paediatric rehabilitation between Western and Eastern Europe. Thus, the meeting aims at providing East-European health professionals with the knowledge concerning the latest attitudes and approaches to paediatric rehabilitation as well as at sharing information on the already established methods and tools to document and evaluate disability in childhood, still lacking in Eastern Europe.

The key issue of the conference – "Early diagnosis implies early intervention" – aims at promoting the idea of the earliest possible implementation of therapeutic procedures, which probably will not prevent disability but definitely will enhance functional outcome.

The representatives from many countries took part in the meeting – that is from France, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Slovenia, Croatia, the USA, etc. Ukraine was presented at the conference as well. The representatives of the International Rehabilitation Clinic delivered the report on the Reliability of the Ukrainian Version of the Gross Motor Function Classification System.

The official programme of the meeting was preceded by the satellite symposia arranged by the EACD and EPNS (European Paediatric Neurology Society).